I long wondered aloud how much the oblique injury affected Drew Brees over the course of the 2014 season. If you listen to our Saints Happy Hour Podcast you likely remember me mentioning that several times over the course of the season. We were all already aware that an oblique injury forced Brees to miss a substantial amount of time in training camp last year and when asked early in the 2014 season how he was feeling he gave some evasive answer like “no one is 100%”. As the narrative and rumors ran rampant that Brees had lost arm strength and the deep ball, and many suggested this was a permanent part of his quick decline, I knew the oblique problem was at least partially if not entirely responsible. I can’t really blame people for assuming this was a sign of the end for Brees and it still could be. I wasn’t buying it, though. Arm strength is always the last thing to go (usually) and I was skeptical Brees would just decline in one season that dramatically unless an injury was directly responsible. If you’re familiar with oblique injuries, they are very common in baseball with pitchers. Those pitchers are typically shut down for a very long period of time and the recovery build up process is extremely slow. The reason is the possibility of a re-occurrence is very high. It’s not that you can’t pitch or perform with an oblique injury, it’s that you run the risk of making it worse and over compensating for it in other areas that can further compromise your health. That’s why baseball teams just shut the pitcher down until they are 100% pain free. And when you have a 162 game season you can afford to do that. Football players, and certainly an MVP candidate starting QB, don’t have that luxury. This statement by Brees is probably the most powerful comment you’ll read:
Brees: “I was kind of trying to survive at times, trying to manufacture power because it wasn’t coming from the places where it should’ve.”
— Katherine Terrell (@Kat_Terrell) August 23, 2015
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In case you were curious, the oblique is on the side of you abdomen where all the rotation and torque come from a throw. Because Brees uses his hips and technique to generate power so much (as oppose to someone like Roethlisberger who could sustain the same injury and still generate plenty of power just with his arm), this kind of injury would hamper a smaller quarterback with sound technique more. That would describe Brees to a T. And if he powered through the injury inhibiting his technique in the process, you should absolutely be concerned that it would continue to affect performance in 2015 and beyond.
Now here comes the good news. Per ESPN:
Although the New Orleans Saints quarterback missed only two weeks during training camp in 2014, he told ESPN’s Ed Werder that he felt his mechanics suffered as a result of the injury. And he spent two months working on those mechanics with longtime throwing coach Tom House this offseason — more time than he has spent with him in years.
“I think I got a little away from my mechanics last year as the season wore on,” Brees said. “Part of it is probably attributable to the oblique injury in camp. I probably came back — not too soon — but wanted to come back so soon, that on the road to recovery I altered my mechanics and overcompensated and developed some bad habits.”
If you read Brees’s book from just after the Super Bowl season, he attributed a lot of his strength and power to rounding out his physique. The quote went something like “you’re only as strong as the weakest part of your body” so he put emphasis on all areas to give himself excellent balance. That balance was thrown off and with it came a disappointing season in terms of performance. Mind you we’re still talking about a trip to the Pro Bowl, 4,952 yards passing, 33 touchdowns, a 97.0 rating and 69.2% completions. I think any quarterback would happily take a season posting numbers like that but even so I think we all saw something with Drew wasn’t completely square a year ago.
Now granted the sample size is very small but his performance in that Patriots preseason game last night certainly supports the theory that Brees is back to peak performance. His deep ball thrown to Brandin Cooks for a 45 yard touchdown could not have been more perfectly placed. It was one throw but in watching it you certainly couldn’t hang on to last year’s common refrain that his ability to throw that pass was gone. Brees finished 8-10 for 159 yards and 2 touchdowns for a perfect quarterback rating of 158.3. Those numbers would’ve been 9-10 and 3 touchdowns if Brandon Coleman had not dropped a catchable scoring pass on the opening drive that forced the Saints to settle for a field goal. Brees was utterly dominant against the reigning Super Bowl champions and while it was just one quarter in the preseason which admittedly means nothing, that is perhaps the biggest reason for optimism when it comes to the 2015 New Orleans Saints. They might have their MVP caliber quarterback back.
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